Smart Meters not so smart
Don’t think for one minute that CSPs have billing and, more particularly, ‘bill shock’ issues all to themselves. The move to ‘smart metering’ for some utility companies in the USA is proving to be a minefield. According to Wikipedia, a smart meter is an advanced meter (usually an electrical meter) that identifies consumption in more [...]
Cloud goes app crazy!
Google looks to do for the ‘cloud’ what Apple successfully did for the mobile world by setting up a Cloud-based app store. But that could be easier said than done.
‘Creative billing’ is alive and well!
Who says creativity in billing is dead? ‘Creative pricing’ strategies uncovered by Australia’s consumer watchdog Choice, has put paid to that.
Telco billing’s last hurrah?
If telecommunications service providers continue to believe that they own their customers because they have a ‘billing’ or ‘customer care’ relationship with them they are in for a really big shock. Those massive investments in billing, payments and customer relationship management systems in the past may soon be of little value unless there is a [...]
Pay your bill, then pay the fee!
An unusually worded press release emanated this week from Telstra in Australia titled “Customers can choose free options to avoid new billing fees; millions exempt.” But it’s not what I seems. In what can only be described as brazen by envious operators in many other countries, Telstra is imposing extra fees on customers depending on [...]
Billing used to put the bling into telecoms, now it’s only responsible for the occasional shock
Billing used to be so important for telecoms service providers that it lived in its own domain with direct links to Finance and IT. But how times have changed. Billing has been banished back to the back room again where it’s just part of the broader BSS group. What’s happened?
When billing was just billing
When billing was just billing the world seemed a simpler place. Read article in Billing OSS magazine on page 34.
Not worth the paper it’s written on: why telcos should conspire to Kill the Bill
This may be the era of the ‘e’ (as prefixed to commerce) and the ‘i’ as (prefixed to phone), but in telecoms for some reason, e-billing (or i-billing) isn’t cutting it. Tony Poulos asks “Why not?” Read article…
Pssst, wanna buy a new BSS?
One of the challenges I face in my role at the TM Forum is keeping abreast of all the innovation and advancement of Business Support Systems, especially around billing and customer care.
Banking via Mobiles in Africa
The so-called ‘mattress to mobile’ revolution, whereby Africans are moving from the habit of keeping under the bed what small sums of physical cash they have and to the use of cellphone-based systems able to deal in transfers of virtual money. Read article.